Late Night Beans with Tad Kensington

WHOOSH!

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another edition of Late Night Beans. Now I know what you’re all thinking, “what are you still doing here, Tad Kensington, when your Netflix special is still in the number one spot and you’ve got business talks planned through most of the UK for the rest of the year?” Firstly, that’s a long thought, and secondly, you need to get out more!

(Audience laughs)

I say it, but I don’t mean it!

(Audience laughs a little louder)

Nah, I love being here with all of you. I really look forward to getting up each day and getting out to where the heart of the people is; every evening right here in front of all of you, unlike where the heart of the people is around 4pm which is everyone counting down the last hour before going home, am I right?

(Cheers and laughter from the audience)

The news has been awful this week, just plain awful. I woke up on Tuesday morning and apparently there are far too many lampposts in the UK. Local authorities are making plans to tear down at least 30% of them in order to cutback on energy costs. This of course follows the recent court case where Jacob Brantford sued Brentford Council because he walked into a lamppost when stumbling home after a night on the lash and claimed it violated his civil rights. I don’t think we can say the future looks brighter with idiots like this in charge.

(A few loud, “yeahs!” and a ripple of applause from the audience)

We have a lot to get through today. This evening is well stacked like the start of a game of Jenga. We have lifestyle specialist and all round good egg Jemima Armspace to tell you where you might be going wrong with your diet and why eating figs may prove to be the key to success. Joseph Puccini is out promoting his latest blockbuster film, ‘Lazerblade 2: the reprisal’, which has already received rave reviews despite filming only starting last week. Margot Linchpin wants you to get involved with her social media awareness campaign about the dangers of chin biscuits and we have local band The Brainfillers to end the show with their new single ‘I want your kidneys’.

(Audience applauds)

I know, I know, I told you we had a lot to get through! I wasn’t lying! You love it though and I love bringing it here for you which is why this is the perfect relationship but buy me dinner first before we get too intimate.

(Audience laughs)

Right onto our first guest!

Growing on

Guys, there comes a time when it’s time to move on. It’s time to grow up. You have a choice: you can grow up, move on, move up or you can grow on. I have chosen to grow on.

During lockdown 1.0, to keep my spirits up and add a little structure to the meaningless days of worrying where i would buy rice, pasta and toilet paper from, I drew a drawing of something every day. It was usually some cartoon from my childhood or things Reuben and I would watch when he was younger. It was fun to begin with, I would put some music on and spend an hour drafting whatever that came to mind.

Four years have now passed. Whilst I am proud of my graphical efforts, some of the corners have started curling and the ones closest to the windows have faded due to sun damage. They’re not the vibrant illustrations they once were. I keep noticing the errors I made too, such as the extra line on the side of Dangermouse’s face, the awful hands of Steven Universe’s dad and the terrible pencil effects for Kermit the Frog. It is time to take them down and send them to the great recycling unit in the sky.

I will be keeping some of my favourites. The rest will be on sale at Sotheby’s in May. Bidding for each starts at £30,000 and plenty of interest has already been noted so you may want to register your own as soon as you can. Each one will be personally signed and framed by myself, and come with a free signed first edition of my new book, ‘Mind sorting: are you the you-est you that ever was?’ Available in stores now.

Mysterious debris

A few years ago I moved to a new location and reported to you on the mysterious lumps in a park not far from where I lived. Well, I now live fairly close to France, where the mysterious objects in local parks are of a different nature.

Until about 2015, if you happened to join the army and they decided you looked like the right sort of person to drive a tank, they would take you to a place called Hogmoor which was some woods with lots of muddy tracks and water traps to drive tanks around. Presumably you then did a tank driving test or something to prove you’d learned all their was to know about piloting big metal boxes around Hampshire woodland.

Anyway, after that the army decided they didn’t want to be involved in this part of Hampshire any more, so they went away, leaving behind large areas of a town that are being redeveloped into housing estates. They also left behind Hogmoor, which has been turned into the town’s equivalent of a park – except it doesn’t have big grassy lawns and flowerbeds, it’s just a big woodland with park-type things in it like an adventure playground and a cafe and stuff. I’m very happy with that because walking around in the woods is far nicer than walking around a manicured park.

The other thing Hogmoor has are all the bits of rusty debris the army didn’t take away when they left. I now walk the dog around here more or less every day, so I thought I’d share with you some of the mysterious military debris I keep finding lying around the place.

A concrete hidey hole for soldier people to hide in while pretending to shoot at other people

‘Lord Winklebottom Investigates’ – mini review

Pip pip! Tip top! Absolutely, old boy. Bally tally ho!

After playing ‘Lord Winklebottom Investigates’ I can safely say that whilst I will never be a posho, I can talk like them if I need to. You may remember that back in May of last year I made a post here explaining how excited I was to play an adventure game featuring a Sherlock Holmes-esque giraffe detective. I have since purchased the game and played through it so here is my review in case you were still sitting on the fence.

It’s a great game. If you’ve ever played a point and click game then you will be very familiar with the user interface. You move the curser around the screen and it will show items of interest. You can look at the item and some you are able to pick up to place in your inventory, which appears at the bottom of the screen when the curser gets near it. Your job is to use the things around you to solve the puzzles you come across. Sometimes it’s a matter of putting two items together and sometimes it requires listening carefully to what the characters are telling you and using a bit of the ole’ imagination pipes.

The story, without spoiling too much, takes you away as Lord Winklebottom to a mysterious island to meet up with an old friend and along for the ride is his good colleague, Dr Frumple. When you arrive you unfortunately discover said friend has died under mysterious circumstances and it’s up to you to work out which of the colourful characters inhabiting his mansion were responsible. You’ll need to speak to everyone to make notes of their relationship to the deceased and their reasons for being there. There is a handy notebook which automatically records certain things that comes up in conversation so you can look back on them if needs be.

Everything about this game is ridiculous and I wouldn’t want it any other way. The dialogue is very funny at times, mainly due to Dr Frumple who is the best character in the entire thing. His innate Britishness seeps into every conversation and he never NEVER puts his cup of tea down. At one point I tried to take the toilet paper and he refused to do so on the grounds that it just wasn’t on. The graphics fit the narrative and atmosphere as you’d expect them to. You can’t half arse this kind of thing, it’s balls deep or nothing. The only part that was a little disatisfying was the music which lingered in the background not really doing much. Perhaps it was doing something however I can’t remember any of it.

It’s not the hardest game in the world. You won’t come across anything as difficult as the ‘goat puzzle’ from Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars or practically everything from Grim Fandango. There was only one part where I needed to soak up some grease from a pan (don’t ask, no spoilers) that took me a little longer than expected and even then the answer was staring me in the face the entire time. I managed to finish it in under five hours and what a five hours they were. I had to wait for a price reduction as thirty squids for a game this short wouldn’t sit well with me. If you can find it for anything under a tenner then I would say go for it, old bean!

Beans: questions and mysteries – ‘Kevbeard’

It’s a new year and it’s time for a fresh ‘chude too. There has been a lot of fan mail recently asking questions about us, inquisitive and rather personal questions, so rather than respond to each and every person I have decided to answer the letters on here because it also gives me a scrumptious post towards my bean count. THAT and you know there were letters with duplicate questions so I’m not going to be a hack and start photocopying letters like some cheap so and so and then sign the bottom as if they’re all original, genuine articles. There are standards to be upheld, you know.

People (and by “people” I mean the two people who somehow managed to obtain my personal address) keep asking me, “what’s the deal with Kevin and his facial hair?”

“Where is it?”

“Does it live in a shoe by the back door?”

Calm down, I said, then pummelled a glass of Bichon Frisé and two slices of toast. Let me set the record straight before all you conspiracy nuts chase me down.

It’s all very simple and wholesome when you know the truth. Yes, it does exist. Kevin has the most wonderful, most bountiful, more buxom beard out of all three of us. He has been growing it since the late 90’s and to this day refuses to pass on his cultivation techniques. Many a time have I plied him with brandy and sought the secrets of his grooming (steady now) abilities and no matter how many bottles I tip down his throat he will not relinquish the goods. Though I may be a little sour of note, I do appreciate the moxie shown by this young man to keep steadfast his confidentialities.

Kevin chooses not to wear his beard in public because it would attract unwanted attention. In the early days when beards were still scorned by the general population he would occasionally bring it out on a lovely summer’s morn. If it were quiet the sun would glow and it would pulse like a rabbit in a hutch filled with alfalfa. His little face would fill with delight to feel the rays, the cool breeze blowing through his bristles, he looked like a young Grizzly Adams. The modern world has taken a shine (no pun intended) to a man’s face candy so there is no chance for any such displays anymore. When the heat got too much, Kev put his beard on a barge to Malta and there it lives in a stunning villa on the West coast. He visits thrice a year, sometimes more if his schedule will allow it.

To catch a glimpse of Kev and his beard would be a rare treat indeed. I get several lucrative offers from the paparazzo every year to disclose the location of the villa so they can but for one moment capture the beauty of the beard and each time I turn them down. Holster your wallets, I say, I cannot be bought. There are more important things than money. We could all learn a lot from Kevbeard (not a pirate however could also be a pirate name).

Happy new (insert cat joke) year

I hope you’re all well and safe as a cat sitting in what looks like half an oven in a Medieval painting.

Butt is it art?

Whilst galivanting around Edinburgh during my recent birthday escapades (god, he never shuts up about his sodding birthday, does he?) Vikki and I managed to take in a lot during a very small period of time. The Christmas market, which was due to open on the Friday we were there, actually didn’t until the evening which was after we had left. This reminded me of Bridlington and all the lovely things that were closed due to the timing of our visit. We did, however, get to walk around the lovely National Gallery which had huge paintings of this and that. Not being an art person myself it was nice to pretend to be a posho and gawp at all the Georgian and Elizabethan works of art all the while wondering when I could eat again and where the gift shop was.

I then came across a monkey in a painting and, boy, wait, there is actually a whole painting to go with the monkey. As I stepped back to look at the entire thing I realised that I didn’t have a clue what any of these paintings meant. Some were nice, some were food for the soul (blah blah blah), most were expensive firewood. I don’t know, you don’t come here for intellectual musings. I’m the dick and fart jokes department so let me tell you I was way out of my depth.

The plaque stated that, “the precise meaning of this rare secular work by El Greco is uncertain. The boy’s act of kindling a flame may allude to the arousal of the sensual passions. A monkey in art is often symbolic of vice, while the man grinning inanely could represent folly. The painting may thus illustrate the simple moralising message that lust appeals to our foolish and baser instincts.”

Art is subject to interpretation and any meaning could be correct. I will, however, volunteer my own thoughts:

Nobody is grinning inanely. The fisherman on the right is clearly a pyromaniac and is looking for some cheap thrills before he has to go back to, I don’t know, the North Sea or wherever he’s working. He looks tired more than anything else.
The boy needs a hobby. Maybe he’s lighting the thingy for attention? Come on, little Billy, go learn how to grift or dance for pennies on the corner.
Once you see the monkey you can’t un-see the monkey and therefore everything else in the painting is irrelevant. He may as well have only painted the monkey which is a stellar painting of a monkey. 10 out of 10

This may carry on into a regular series because I feel as though art and art appreciation could be a new career for me in 2024. I’m clearly very good at it and you should always do what you’re good at.

Tiny pig

Having recently been tasked with trying to find more photos for the upcoming 2024 Pouring Beans calendar, I was looking through the various photos on my phone in the hopes of locating the ones of the boxes I used to keep in the corner of my bedroom that were riddled with various quips, zingers and bizarre things written down during phone calls from over a decade ago. Needless to say, the search is currently ongoing (although the boxes may be hiding in the one cupboard in my flat).

As I flicked through the many, many pictures in my possession I came across a series involving a tiny toy guinea pig. These clearly were taken by one or all three of my nieces and transferred via the usual means of Whatsapp. I definitely do not own a tiny guinea pig and did not spend time putting them in hilarious places so that I could take photographs to mark the occasion. We’ve all met me, right? It is the kind of thing I could potentially do, I’ll admit, however this time I am not the culprit.

Given that everyone absolutely loves the PicCollages that I make, I have decided to make a PicCollage to collect the best of the six in my camera reel. Suck deep and bathe, my friends.